Soul Bound

1        Soul Bound

1.1      Finding her Feet

1.1.3    An Eventful Journey

1.1.3.4  The easiest decision

Kafana dropped by the kitchen while the others carried on towards the steward.

“Lelia, thank you for being so gracious, letting me have such a free run of your domain yesterday. I’m sorry to ask another favour. I’m going on a journey, and I’m going to have to feed a group of large and hungry men for several days, and I don’t own so much as a pot or a spoon. If there are any scraps left over from the feast, would it be too much trouble to bundle some of it up for me to take with us? Size and weight isn’t a problem, thanks to magic storage.”

Lelia looked outraged.

“You silly girl, what do you take me for? You are an ally of House Landi and a personal friend of Lord Claudio Landi himself. We’ve been doing nothing else for the past 4 hours but preparing food for your trip. Including tripods, kindling, a fire starter, a wood axe, a full set of pots, pans, cauldrons, bowls, jugs, jars, knives, skewers, and every tool we have a duplicate of. There’s enough wine and beer to get a garrison drunk, and I myself made sure that every herb, spice, provision and seasoning we’ve packaged for you is fresh and of high quality. ‘Scraps’ indeed. Humph!”

She looked mortally offended, but after a moment the grins cracking on the faces of the cook’s assistants gave away the jest. Soon they were doubled over in laughter, and she hugged the lot of them, and sang merrily as she stored the huge pile away in her inventory stash. Thinking for a moment, she took a sheet of paper and left a note propped up on one of the stash's empty shelves saying:

“This shelf is reserved for the use of Kafana the Vessel. Only she may touch the items on it, and they belong to her.”

And then she arranged a neat pile of tasty snacks there, as a welcome gift. Touching her pendant, she concentrated on the face of the vessel as she’d first seen her and said {System, please highlight this gift for my vessel’s attention when she dreams.}

Entering the steward’s usual hall, she walked over to the others as they chatted with him. He seemed more relaxed and less stern than he had when she’d first met him. As he spotted her approaching, he immediately turned to her and swept an elaborate bow.

“Madame Kafana Sincero.”

“Faithful Steward Brusco.” she returned the greeting awkwardly, not sure what to do while wearing breeches, and settled for a deep nod.

“May I present to you your pass, and a copy of the most accurate maps we have?”

The pass was a circular metal disc, with a complex network of runes, lines and curves inscribed deeply upon it. Her fingers tingled slightly as she placed it in her pouch. There were 5 maps held in a leather folder: the Villa and the surrounding estate, the route from the Villa to the city with possible stopping places and reported danger spots, the streets and canals of the city with allegiances marked, the federation of Etruscan city states with trade routes and shipping lanes, and the whole world with starting cities and unknown or monster controlled areas. She was pretty sure not every Adventurer was getting a folder like this, but she didn’t feel guilty - she had helped the steward out quite a bit. She stored it in her inventory box, after having held up each map carefully for a couple of seconds.

{Minion, please store images of these maps, so I can get them printed out and hang them on my bedroom walls.}

[Yes my Queen.]

The steward continued “Normally at this point I would give you some advice about where to go in the city, Madame Kafana, but I believe my Lord intends to see you off at the gate in person, and would prefer to do this himself. So without further ado, let us visit the treasury, if Bungo and Bulgaria would please wait here for our return.”

The treasury turned out to be a stone tower heavily warded by runes and guarded by a pair of alert men-at-arms in full mail. They were asked to remain behind a line in the ground while the steward stepped forwards to be recognised. One of the guards waved a stone at the steward and then peered through a monocle at him and asked him a series of questions that were somehow muffled from their hearing, while the other guard stood well back.

Apparently they were satisfied, because they opened the door and waved them in. Inside it looked like a museum, with each floor being a square room full of shelves of carefully labelled boxes. On an ordinary wooden table in the middle of the first room, a book lay open.

“My Lord consulted with High Mage Camillo, and they have a suggestion for Kafana Sincero and a suggestion for Wellington Fiducia, but you are all free to select as you will. What would you like?”

Wellington said, agreeably: “By all means, let us start off by seeing your Lord’s suggestions.”

The steward let the two of them up the stairs, while Alderney and Tomsk browsed the index book. They stopped at the 1st floor and opened a small box. Holding out a ring to Kafana, he said

“This is the ring of Francis the Navigator. It has been in the Landi family since before Torello was founded. Camillo assures me that it will boost both your healing and buffing, even in lands where water is weak. He is pretty sure it does much more than that, but it is from the age of legends and this is not his area of expertise.”

She tried it on, and looked at its details using the magnifying icon:

The Ring of Francis the Navigator (UNIQUE ITEM, HOLY ARTIFACT)

+50% attunement to the element of water

(Storm Magic, Reinforcement Magic, Necromantic Magic and Healing Magic)

Freedom of movement

???

+15 to the skill ‘Swimming’

???

???

This ring was a gifted to Francis in person, by the deity Mor

Durability: INDESTRUCTIBLE

“This gift is princely. I will try my utmost to be worthy of it.”

Brusco opened a slightly larger box in the same room for Wellington, and brought out a very ornate dagger.

“This is an athame of light. It can cut any non-living substance as easily as butter, though it is incapable of harming living flesh. They are intended for rune mages, and can be used to carve runes on any surface. You may find it is also quite useful if you happen to encounter any undead, and it offers great protection for your mind against attempts to possess, confuse or influence it.”

“Does that include protecting against attempts to scry or read my thoughts?”

“It does.”

“That one property alone makes it invaluable for a merchant. Your Lord is wise indeed. I accept his suggestion.”

Brusco smiled slyly: “I rather thought you might.”

They went back down, to find Alderney bouncing excitedly but Tomsk still scratching his head.

Tomsk said: “Do you have all the weapons in a single room? I can’t tell from just the names and properties. I need to see which feels right in my hand.”

Alderney chanted: “I’ve found it, I’ve found it. I get to be a Tigger. Tiggers are wonderful things.”

“Weapons are all on the 3rd floor, Tomsk Capitano. Feel free to take them out and try them. There are no cursed items on that floor. But please put each one back in its correct box. You have no idea the pain for a non-expert such as myself of having to determine which of ten very similar longswords is which.”

Alderney all but took Brusco by the hand and dragged him up to the 2nd floor, then pointed at a particular box. “That one. I want that one. Please please please please please.”

Kafana looked on in trepidation, as Brusco bemusedly opened a box with a red hatched warning notice on it. She hoped it wasn’t a bomb. Alderney liked explosions. The louder, the better.

Brusco held out a pair of incredibly solid looking engineer’s boots. Alderney gave a whoop of glee and started immediately pulling them on.

“Yes! They fit. They fit me. I’ll take them. This. These ones. My choice.”

She was nearly incoherent with ecstasy. She stood up carefully and walked carefully back down the stairs, not bouncing at all, but a huge grin plastered over her face

A minute later a message came from her over the chat {I’ve gone out to the lawn to practise. Tell me when you’re ready to leave.}

Kafana headed up one more floor, to see how Tomsk was doing. He appeared to have narrowed the choice down to three, and was trying each in turn, doing cuts in the air.

First was a rapier. It moved incredibly rapidly.

The second was an obsidian throwing axe, covered with runes.

The third was a rusty longsword, that seemed rather out of place.

“Tell me about them” Kafana encouraged, as Wellington came to join them.

Tomsk waved to each one in turn:

“The rapier doesn’t just increase dexterity. It actually boosts its own speed of movement. In a duel against a human wielding a light sword, the opponent would never get a chance to hit me. Even against a shield and heavy sword I’d give myself even odds, because rapiers can target weak points with deadly accuracy. But I’m worried it doesn’t do enough damage to help with boss monsters, especially at high levels. It really needs a way of adding random status debuffs or criticals, to take advantage of the hit rate.”

“The throwing axe is designed to take down mages from a distance. It passes through most wards and elemental walls or shields like they don’t exist. It can even be used to parry spells targeted directly at you. But it doesn’t automatically return, so you risk losing it. It doesn’t stop area of effect spells targeted near you. And it isn’t going to be better than a normal axe against most things we’ll face.”

“The longsword is a long term project. Right now, its useless. But it is a scaling weapon. It leaches a bit of experience from the party, and it improves as you go up in level. It is also designed to be very very easy to place multiple enchantments on it. One extra enchantment slot per 10 levels. By the time you reached level 80, it would be one of the best weapons in the game. If it was soul bound to you, then if you moved to a different world, you’d start off at level one, but you’d have this weapon with 8 enchantments upon it that you’d be able to use right from the start. Your levelling up speed would be incredible.”

Wellington thought for ten seconds. “If we need to win a duel or fight a mage, there are lots of other approaches we can try. But I’ve never heard of anything that will let you speed level up in new worlds. Take the longsword."

“You really want that?” asked Brusco, astonished, when Tomsk presented the decision “Well, your free choice. By all means, it is yours.”